Nando Messias Archive | Bishopsgate Institute

About this Archive

Administrative / Biographical History:

Nando Messias is a trans-disciplinary, London based performance artist, choreographer and queer academic, whose work straddles performance art, dance and theatre. Their artistic practice confronts gender and transgender identity, visibility and violence, rooted in their personal experience of navigating all of these within the world, particularly navigating transphobia and other forms of discrimination and exclusion they have been subject to. Messias’ work balances the political and ethical foreground of their work, with playfulness, glamour and humour, and their archive still holds the scents of perfumes worn in various performances.

As well as a practitioner, Nando is movement director and a researcher of queer theory and performance. Nando’s publications include ‘Sissy that Walk: The Sissy’s Progress’ in Queer Dramaturgies (2016), ‘visibility: Performance and Activism’ in Performing Interdisciplinarity (2017), 'Injurious Acts: A Struggle With Sissy in Performance in Choros International Dance Journal (2018), 'Bibi is a Sissy: Drag, Death by Silence and the Journey to Self-Determination from Brazil to Britain' in Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories (2020), 'This is My Body: the Queer Messianic Dysphoria of The Pink Supper' (2022) and 'TransMission: Sissy TV' (2023).

Nando’s solo work has been curated by the Live Art Development Agency as part of the programme ‘Just Like a Woman,’ shown in the City of Women Festival in Ljubljana (2013), New York and London (2015). They were the recipient of 2019 Library of Performing Rights Commission for which they developed The Pink Supper.

Scope and Content:

The archive of Nando Messias, which sits within the Museum of Transology collection, includes papers and ephemera, which span from press cuttings, programmes and flyers, all relating to work and performances by Nando or relating to Nando; notebooks which include various working project notes, and personal diary entries; illustrations; posters; and various papers relating to different performance projects including 'The Pink Supper'; 'The Sissy's Progress'; 'Death and the Sissy'; 'Shoot the Sissy'; 'Trainers'; various posters and exhibition captions; various photographic material including physical and digital records; videos, capturing various performances and a short film by Nando, and also videos collected by Nando; various writings, scripts and administrative papers; publications collected by Nando, many of which feature references to Nando or collaborations with Nando; Nando's performance archive, which consists of items and objects from various performances, and also object description forms filled out by Museum of Transology volunteers, as well as tags with former object references, the performance archive includes material from 'Sissy!'; 'All of Me'; 'Shoot the Sissy'; 'Death and the Sissy'; 'The Pink Supper'; 'Aurora'; 'Transmission: Sissy TV'; and 'Walking Failure'.